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Sunday, December 6, 2015

Flannel Nightgown

In 2007, I made a flannel nightgown for my mom:

It's been eight years, and she asked if I would make another one. Sure, but I could not find the same fabric. Well, not at my local JoAnn Fabrics store. I sent her pictures of available fabrics, and she selected three. Of course, when I went back, there was only enough of one of the fabrics.

She asked that the nightgown be made slightly smaller, that the sleeves go all the way to her wrists with elastic, and that it be lengthened. These were all minor changes. By the way, I modeled the nightgown above, and my arms are shorter than hers.

I started by sewing the sleeve seams. I also interfaced and stitched the outer yoke. Then I trimmed those seams with the serger.

I started pinning the body to the yoke using the center front and back points and the shoulder points. I also pinned all the other matching points:

I found the center of each section so I could place a pin at the middle:

Finding the middle again gave me this result:

What you see is a good start on the pinning:

When all the pinning was done, it looked like this:

All that tedious pinning was for a specific reason: I do not like to pull gathers, so I made small tucks all around as I sewed:

Here's another perspective:

...and another view:

Crossed seams are bulky, and I forgot to trim some seam allowances. Here's how I trimmed the yoke seam allowances after the fact:

I pressed the yoke seam allowances towards the yoke.

Having remembered about bulky seam allowances, here's how I trimmed the yoke lining seam allowances as I was preparing to attach it:

I attached the yoke lining to the yoke, trimmed and understitched the neck edge, and turned the lining to the inside. Then I edge stitched the lower edge of the yoke to hold the lining in place.

I finished the sleeve and hem edges with the serger, then stitched the underarm seams, and finished them with the serger, too.

I hemmed the bottom, and also folded the sleeve casings. When I stitched the sleeve casings, I left just over an inch unsewn, inserted some elastic, and tied the elastic so my Mom can adjust them to fit.

Here I am modeling the latest version of the flannel nightgown for my Mom: